Rich Cherry

PrincipleModern OperationsUSA

Rich Cherry is a founding principle at Modern Operations, a museum construction, start up and operations consultancy. Modern Operations combines Rich's skills with those of Jessica Jamroz, an award winning, multi-disciplinary design architect practitioner and strategic planner with a critical eye on the materialization of details, fabrication processes and schedules. Modern Operations excels at assisting clients in making meaningful and inspiring public architecture and cultural spaces that work operationally, take advantage of the newest technology and maximize every dollar invested. Current projects include supporting the construction and start-up operations of the new Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Museum, acting at owners representative for The Albright-Knox Art Museum expansion project and ongoing support for The Broad museum.

Most recently Rich was the deputy director of The Broad, a new award winning contemporary art museum in downtown Los Angeles. The Museum opened to rave reviews in 2015 and immediately joined the top 100 most attended art museum in the world. He oversaw all aspects of the museum’s operations, including visitor services, collection management, information technology, finance, retail, security, human resources, marketing and communications, parking operations and facilities.

Prior to the museum’s opening, Rich managed the planning, design and construction of The Broad, its parking structure and adjacent outdoor plaza and streetscape updates. In working with the museum team to design The Broad as an innovative visitor experience, Rich also initiated and implemented the museum’s mobile ticketing, mobile retail, and a mobile audio app with contextually aware content. He also designed and implemented an award-winning visitor service floor staff program that utilized a custom-designed online learning management system to train a diverse team of associates in security, customer service, art and architecture.

Previously, Cherry was the founding director of the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC), a consortium of 27 cultural organizations working together to facilitate and execute the use of online technology in the museums, cultural arts, and science institutions in Balboa Park, San Diego. His experience also includes serving as the director of operations at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, where he oversaw information technology, operations, admissions, facilities, security, capital projects and more than $90 million in ongoing construction, and as the chief information officer, director of facilities and head of library and archives at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. He previously was the chief information officer of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and he has also taught New Media theory, web design and animation in the Media Studies department at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Rich serves as co-chair for Museums and the Web, an international conference exploring the social, cultural, design, technological, economic, and organizational issues of museums in a digital world. He also serves as president of the MuseWeb Foundation, which he co-founded to accelerate innovation in both cultural practice and business models. He is currently vice chair of the Culver City Cultural Affairs Commission, a board member of the Culver City Cultural Affairs Foundation and a project advisor on the National Science Foundation funded Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance STEM Program.

Before his museum career, Rich worked in technology in the fields of banking, manufacturing, and also worked as a field service engineer. He was also a commercial diver in the Gulf of Mexico and served for six years in the United States Marine Corps.